| Internet-Draft | Callsign-Derived IPv6 Interface IDs | December 2022 |
| Pratten | Expires 22 June 2023 | [Page] |
This document presents a process by which IPv6 interface identifiers may be derived from amateur radio callsigns to create unique addresses for packet radio nodes without the need for central coordination.¶
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When coordinating a global-scale packet radio network, it may not be practical or desireable to require all participating stations to request and/or register their local IP addresses with a central authority. The addressing technique presented in this document aims to provide a standard method by which radio nodes can self-assign addresses by utilizing the existing guarantee that all station callsigns are unique.¶
Packet radio stations (also referred to as "nodes") are generally identified via their station callsign followed by an informational number or letter, this suffix is used to describe the type or an arbitrary ID of the station.¶
Unlike other common network protocols used by packet radio nodes, IPv6 [RFC8200] does not offer a mechanism for addressing another node by its callsign and ID. This means that an alternate addressing scheme, such as the one defined in this document, is needed to allow nodes to communicate with each other using IPv6.¶
To determine a 64 bit long [RFC4291] interface ID for a packet radio node, the following steps are taken:¶
Using this method to compute the address for a station with the callsign "VA3ZZA" and the ID "10" as a host in the prefix "2001:db8::/64" [RFC4632] would result in the station address: "2001:db8::9846:807d:5b56:3a7a".¶
This method of IP address assignment has several benefits:¶
While it is possible for one node to correlate another's IP address to its station callsign via a lookup table, ideally the raw callsign could be encoded directly into the IPv6 address. Doing so would both allow for a node to easily determine the callsign of a sending station without additional metadata embedded in the received packet, and allow the source address on outgoing packets to be used to satisfy legal station identification requirements.¶
Unfortunately, this is not feasible due to many governments assigning temporary "special event callsigns" to stations. These special callsigns often do not follow the general length restrictions on permanent callsigns, raising the possibility that a station will be assigned a callsign longer than is possible to encode directly in an IPv6 address, thus being un-addressable.¶
The International Telecommunication Union requires all stations operating in the amateur service to self-identify when transmitting. Various countries also impose further requirements such as the interval and method by which stations must identify themselves.¶
The legal requirement to identify all transmissions nullifies any privacy benefits gained from other privacy-aware addressing methods such as SLAAC [RFC7217].¶
This memo includes no request to IANA.¶
This document should not affect the security of the Internet.¶